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I've never seen an SPA which scales properly and doesn't become a bloated mess, maybe that's possible but it's definitely harder to make it work than using trad

I've never seen an SPA which scales properly and doesn't become a bloated mess, maybe that's possible but it's definitely harder to make it work than using traditional server side template rendering

DANmode 11d ago
Plenty of app usecases don’t need to “scale” - immediately or ever!
- realusername 11d ago
  That's a good point but you never know that from the start, "this app won't scale well" is a hard sell for a new project in my opinion
  - DANmode 11d ago
    Especially today, single-user stuff, especially in categories of things like health, especially when you’re writing your own stuff, that’s when you know from the start that scaling doesn’t matter! =] Related, and more powerful than my comments in this thread are going to be: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
    - realusername 11d ago
      I don't only mean "scale" in terms of users but also scale in terms of features. So you have to guarantee that your product will stay low users and low features forever or spend a very high effort to try to partially overcome that block when you change your mind. And guaranteeing that it will stay low features is much harder than low users I think. In exchange for that you get a better talent pool for recruiting but does that matter if your product has to stay low scale anyways?
      - DANmode 10d ago
        Or you have to distribute your code in such a fashion, and structure your business model in such a way, that “scale” doesn’t require you doing things that have nothing to do with providing the feature set (most SaaS).
        realusername 10d ago
        I'm currently working on a SaaS at my company and we have a lot of issues because of the SPA, I estimate we spend around 5% at least, maybe 10% of the workforce just on SPA complexity. It can work for some SaaS but if you stay low employee count, low users and you have a core feature used everywhere in the whole product and nothing else
        DANmode 10d ago
        What’s the stack? Is it being used even sort-of in the right place / way? Feels like a glaring omission =]
        realusername 10d ago
        The stack is Rails / React SPA for the frontend. > Is it being used even sort-of in the right place / way? It's a SaaS where users are mostly always logged-in, kind of an app so you would think it should work from the outside. I think these are the full requirements I would put for a good SPA experience: - low users - low number of features / or a single main feature reused in different ways - low number of employees - it's an app and not a website - you don't have any users living in remote places / poor internet connection - users are all using modern browsers and can be asked to switch to another one if needed And I think in my company we only have one of this list, making it painful.
        DANmode 9d ago
        If anyone wants to show up and talk non-React anything, at any point, I’ll be checking back around later! Until then: just talk smack about React! None of these things you listed are critiques of single-page apps (SPA).

I've never seen an SPA which scales properly and doesn't become a bloated mess, maybe that's possible but it's definitely harder to make it work than using traditional server side template rendering

DANmode 11d ago

Plenty of app usecases don’t need to “scale” - immediately or ever!

realusername 11d ago
That's a good point but you never know that from the start, "this app won't scale well" is a hard sell for a new project in my opinion
- DANmode 11d ago
  Especially today, single-user stuff, especially in categories of things like health, especially when you’re writing your own stuff, that’s when you know from the start that scaling doesn’t matter! =] Related, and more powerful than my comments in this thread are going to be: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
  - realusername 11d ago
    I don't only mean "scale" in terms of users but also scale in terms of features. So you have to guarantee that your product will stay low users and low features forever or spend a very high effort to try to partially overcome that block when you change your mind. And guaranteeing that it will stay low features is much harder than low users I think. In exchange for that you get a better talent pool for recruiting but does that matter if your product has to stay low scale anyways?
    - DANmode 10d ago
      Or you have to distribute your code in such a fashion, and structure your business model in such a way, that “scale” doesn’t require you doing things that have nothing to do with providing the feature set (most SaaS).
      - realusername 10d ago
        I'm currently working on a SaaS at my company and we have a lot of issues because of the SPA, I estimate we spend around 5% at least, maybe 10% of the workforce just on SPA complexity. It can work for some SaaS but if you stay low employee count, low users and you have a core feature used everywhere in the whole product and nothing else
        DANmode 10d ago
        What’s the stack? Is it being used even sort-of in the right place / way? Feels like a glaring omission =]
        realusername 10d ago
        The stack is Rails / React SPA for the frontend. > Is it being used even sort-of in the right place / way? It's a SaaS where users are mostly always logged-in, kind of an app so you would think it should work from the outside. I think these are the full requirements I would put for a good SPA experience: - low users - low number of features / or a single main feature reused in different ways - low number of employees - it's an app and not a website - you don't have any users living in remote places / poor internet connection - users are all using modern browsers and can be asked to switch to another one if needed And I think in my company we only have one of this list, making it painful.
        DANmode 9d ago
        If anyone wants to show up and talk non-React anything, at any point, I’ll be checking back around later! Until then: just talk smack about React! None of these things you listed are critiques of single-page apps (SPA).